James Corum is an American military historian and the author of eight books on military history and counter-insurgency. He is a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army Reserve (rtd) and has 28 years' experience as an army officer.

Obama's START treaty undermines the defence systems we will need if Iran decides to nuke us

With bad news pouring in on the eve of the midterm elections, Barack Obama is desperate to show the public some kind of success for the administration. The easiest solution is to accomplish something in the foreign policy field that can be hailed by America's adoring mainstream media as a triumph of his wisdom and leadership.

To get his success, Obama and the Democratic leadership in the Senate will try to ram through ratification of the new US/Russia START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) with as little comment as possible. If there were any serious public debate on this treaty it would not stand a chance of being accepted – even with the Democrats' current majority in the Senate.

The new START Treaty, signed in April by Russia’s President Medvedev and Barack Obama, will have a massive impact on the security of the United States and the West. President Obama is spinning the treaty in the same way he spun his healthcare legislation to push it through the Congress. But, once again, positive claims are contradicted by the actual text.

The treaty is ostensibly about offensive nuclear weapons. For decades, America rejected the Russian view that missile defences had to be linked to limits on offensive weapons. And it ostensibly stuck to this principle throughout the ongoing arms negotiations. Before signing the treaty, Obama assured Congress that the treaty would not cripple US efforts to establish missile defences against Iran and rogue states.

In reality, the treaty will clearly limit any attempts by the United States to provide defences for itself or its allies. Paragraph 2 of the preamble recognises the “interrelationship between strategic offensive arms and strategic defensive arms…” The treaty also states that “current [my italics] strategic defensive arms do not undermine the viability and effectiveness of the strategic arms of the parties…” This sounds nice, but the emphasis on current missile defences also means that the Russians can use this wording to claim that any future defences against nuclear missiles are illegal.

Unfortunately, the missile defence systems that the treaty undermines could be useful when Iranian nuclear warheads now being developed (with Russian material and technology) are fired at the US and its allies (from missiles built with Russian and Chinese technology).

The treaty also assures the superiority of future Russian nuclear weapons. It reduces the numbers of offensive weapons and eliminates bomber aircraft as weapons carriers. For their part, the Russians are devoting considerable funds and effort to modernising their remaining missiles and warheads. In contrast, Obama has stopped any modernisation of US weapons. This means that America will be left with 1980s weapons facing start-of-the-art Russian missiles and warheads. Moreover, the Obama administration’s lack of interest in modernising tactical nuclear weapons also means that the Russians will have vast superiority of tactical nukes over America – superior in numbers and technology.

Indeed, the treaty is so committed to not allowing the US to have a missile defence that it forbids converting any current offensive missiles to be scrapped into defensive weapons. This was a promising path that could potentially have saved America a lot of money and ensured we got missile defences sooner rather than later. Rejecting a low-cost defensive option is strange behaviour for an administration that professes such concern with keeping military costs minimal.

In short – this treaty seriously undermines American and Western defences in several ways. It cripples any efforts to defend ourselves from Iranian, North Korean and other rogue nation missiles. Coupled with the Obama administration’s refusal to modernise the US nuclear arsenal, or to seriously consider missile defenses, it serves to ensure American military inferiority for decades to come. Ratifying this treaty would be a huge mistake.